June 27, 2017

Day 38 – Back to the mountains

Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.

Mileage: 6.5 mile nearo to get back up into the mountains

We started the day with a delicious breakfast at Alabama Hills Café before going around town and finishing up our town chores. Soon we would be heading back out to the trail to start our adventure in the snow and mountains.

I went to the laundromat for some laundry, bought some new shoes, bought a few odds and ends at the outfitters, and headed to the grocery store to resupply. Dodger is really organized and inspired me to write down everything I had in my bear canister and come up with a plan for what to buy at the store. Hopefully it helped with my resupply and I didn’t buy too much food, but only time can tell.

Lone Pine is a cool little town but walking around made me antsy to get back on trail. Being able to see the incredible mountains all around you really just made me want to get back out there.


We started packing up all of our stuff and I really felt like a brand new hiker with all of my additions to my pack. New shoes, new trekking pole baskets, new carabiner, new (old from the hiker box) gloves, etc. I’m ready to tackle anything!

Awwww yeah!

We briefly stopped at McDonald’s for some quick energy before trying to hitch out of town. We walked over to the road out of Lone Pine into the mountains and started trying to hitch. We had inherited a nice cardboard sign that said “Hikers to: Horseshoe”, so we were trying our luck with that. No one had stopped when Dom or Savage were holding it, so I decided to give it a shot. I saw a pickup truck coming down the road and starting pulling out my best hitchhiking sign dance moves (later dubbed “The Hitching Hustle” by Dodger) and lo and behold, the truck stopped! A very kind electrician named Shawn was heading up to Whitney Portal, but was willing to drive further to Horseshoe Meadows for us! Such a nice guy! We all piled into the bed of his truck and took off up the mountains.

Riding in the bed of a pickup truck that’s flying up mountain roads in the Sierras is quite the experience. We were all pretty cramped, but everyone was having an excellent time enjoying the sunshine, views, and breeze.

Shawn got us there in no time, and we ran into some more hikers that were in the same situation we had experienced with getting split up in the tails down. We tried to help them work it out before we headed up to the trail, so hopefully they eventually found Trevor!

Since we got such a late start (6 PM), we weren’t going to do a while out of hiking, so we leisurely walked 6.5 miles to the closest campsite. Along the way, we encountered a ton of mosquitos, which were being much more aggressive than usual. I stopped to grab my deet, but I couldn’t find it, so Dodger let me borrow hers. I sprayed one arm, switched hands, then tried to spray my other arm. Instead of my arm, unfortunately I had twisted the nozzle and managed to get 100% of the spray my eyes. Ahhhhhhhhh… Ouch!

I immediately couldn’t see or open my eyes and I knew deet was pretty bad for the human body, so I felt my way over to my backpack and started flushing my eyes out with the limited amount of water I had. After a few flushes, I was able to open my eyes again and cry a little bit, and luckily I seemed pretty fine! I later read the warning label on the deet, which says “WARNING: Do not get in eyes. Causes substantial but *temporary *eye injury.” Yay for only temporary pain! 🎉

We walked through some pretty awesome meadows and forests to get to our campsite at 11,100 feet, which was a perfect place to camp with plenty of flat, open space. As usual, by the time everyone had made it up to camp, Robin had already dug a fire pit and started a nice campfire, so we decided that he should be Flame from now on. He seemed pretty fine with it, but we’ll see if it sticks.

Tomorrow is our set-up hike for our Whitney summit the next day, so it won’t be too strenuous and should allow us to sleep early so we can tackle Whitney in the morning. Exciting!

Whitney?